A social network for English teachers and learners in China - with over 100,000 registered users...
Client: British Council
Project: English Online
Web site: http://www.englishonline.org.cn/en/
English Online is an initiative that was developed by the British Council to encourage the learning of English in China. Brightlemon London was appointed to develop the site after a careful selection process, and the web site was so successful that it was referenced in Gordon Brown’s 2008 visit to China.
The brief was to design and build a web site to promote the learning of English in China using a number of social networking features to connect a community of over 100,000 users. One of the most important functions of the site was that it should be accessible to speakers of English and Chinese (traditional and simplified), with multilingual capabilities.
We developed the site over a number of months, working closely with British Council representatives to create a dynamic and innovative website, that could be accessed on computers and via mobile phone browsers. Our customised content management system enables the web site to be extremely easy to maintain and update. The online community allows users to interact in a safe and secure learning environment, tailored to their specific requirements.
Industry and Press Presence
Drupal founder's web site http://buytaert.net/british-council-using-drupal
The BBC website http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7193681.stm
The Sun website http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article701093.ece
Downing Street website www.number10.gov.uk
Key features
- Multi user registration;
- Customised content for individual users;
- User profile;
- Personal blogs;
- Custom newsletters;
- Web site theme picker.
Multimedia Support
- Flash video;
- Podcasts;
- Video;
- Audio.
Community Features
- Network creation (invite / accept / reject ‘friends’);
- Online discussions;
- Forums;
- Polls;
Site Management
- Bespoke content management solution (CMS);
- User management;
- CMS workflows;
- CMS staging area
Web 2.0 Features
- Tag clouds;
- Mobile phone version enabled;
- English Online widget;
What the client said
"We have worked with Brightlemon London since the end of 2007, when we commisioned them on a project for the British Council called English Online.
Our site was built in Drupal, an open source CMS and Brightlemon led the development of a site which contained multi lingual capacity, as well as an in depth registration and customer relationship management system as a foundation for our community driven website for English learners across mainland China and Hong Kong.
In order to enhance our relationship management with our users, Brightlemon also developed a widget using Adobe AIR , as well as a mobile website to cater for the growing number of users accessing the mobile web. All of this has contributed to over 50,000 members in our first year since launch.
The project is ongoing, but in development was delivered to on time, and we have continued to use Brightlemon in order to enhance our offer as well as assist the project in developing our social media functionalities."
Further Links
English Online featured on Dries Buytaert site (the creater of Druapl)
